City dispersing July 3 fireworks

Chicago's traditional July 3 Grant Park fireworks extravaganza is shelved this year, eliminating one of the city's largest communal experiences that brings more than a million people to the lakefront to spread out blankets, coolers and lawn chairs to watch the colorful spectacle.

The fireworks show, which ends a three-decades-plus run, joins the South Side Irish Parade, Venetian Night and the Outdoor Film Festival as major community events that have gone by the wayside in the last year, victims of budget woes or public safety concerns.

Instead, Mayor Richard Daley's administration said Wednesday that it will stage three smaller fireworks displays scattered along the lakefront to save money and make it easier for police to deal with crowds.

"I would say we're doing it to be fiscally responsible, because we have to be," said Megan McDonald, director of the Mayor's Office of Special Events, at a City Hall news conference Daley did not attend. "We're also doing it to more effectively manage what happens at the Taste of Chicago, as well as citywide on an already busy holiday weekend. I think it is always challenging to manage a million, 2 million people in a very small space."

The city expects to save between $1 million and $2 million through festival downsizings, McDonald said, including "at least several hundred thousand dollars" on the Independence Day fireworks.

The North Side fireworks will be held around Montrose Beach and the South Side fireworks in the vicinity of 63rd Street Beach, though McDonald said the exact locations have not been finalized. Another display will light the sky over Navy Pier. The fireworks shows will be 15 minutes -- down three minutes from the July 3 show -- and will be synchronized.

"I think the idea is that we're encouraging people to go back to their communities, and to stretch those fireworks shows throughout the lakefront, so I think we can manage more effectively a busy holiday weekend citywide," McDonald said.

Ald. Leslie Hairston, 5th, is enthusiastic about hosting fireworks in her South Side ward. "We are a city of neighborhoods, and this is a chance to showcase that," she said.

The events will be safer, Hairston predicted, with smaller crowds and police familiar with each area helping direct people to and from the lakefront.

Public reaction, however, is mixed. Ken Williams of Chicago Heights said separate fireworks will enforce a feeling of separation.

"It's just another way to keep a class of people in their designated spots," said Williams, 50. "The mayor is going to get a lot of criticism for this. The people in the South Side, we're going to feel like we're being pushed to our individual community. But we're still going to come down to the Loop. It's not going to work."

Public safety also became a concern in 2008 after five people were shot -- one fatally -- over the Fourth of July weekend near the Taste. Some of the savings comes from closing the Taste three hours early on July 3 and July 4. Shutting down at 6 p.m. means less money is spent on police, fire, and Streets and Sanitation, McDonald said.

Corporate funding for special events has dipped, McDonald acknowledged. Three festivals -- the Celtic music fest, Latin music fest and country music fest -- will be relocated to Millennium Park this year because events there are less expensive to stage than at Grant Park, she said.

Such is the reality the current Mayor Daley is confronting in deciding to scale back a fireworks display that dates back to his father, Mayor Richard J. Daley, who started the July 3 tradition in 1975. It moved from Olive Park north of Navy Pier to Grant Park in 1978. Back then, the elder Daley invited Chicagoans to the lakefront "to witness, what can be said without question, the most beautiful fireworks show ever presented in Chicago."